Wednesday, August 26, 2015

While it starts unexpectedly crawling the streets of
Rotterdam with orphaned children, Ender’s
Shadow picks up steam quite quickly. Returning to the format that made Ender’s Gameso
great, Orson Scott Card decides that we are going to train a child to save
humanity, only this time we witness the story through Bean, a member of Ender’s
jeesh, and a backup to Ender’s role as commander. If Ender fails, if he falters
(and he does), someone else has to push the buttons.

Graff occupies the very same role he did with Ender, but
this time Bean’s minute stature and inquisitive nature allows the reader to
snoop on Graff, to seem more of the behind the scenes, and to do so through the
eyes of one of his boys. While in Ender’s Game
and Ender we saw the blend of resentment and determination, the will to both
win and decimate, in Bean we see the cold, calm calculation of a boy who learns
that he is not quite human, that through genetic manipulation he will never
live to see his twenties but will possess superior intellect. Thus he is
plucked off the streets by a high ranking Catholic Nun and placed in battle
school where he forever exists in Ender’s shadow.

Yet is Ender his enemy or is he one that Bean should emulate
and protect? Written as a companion text, most who open this novel know the
ultimate outcome, but Ender has support, Ender vegged out after killing Bonzo
and was absent from command school, other people killed the buggers … err
formics, and they too reacted. How did Petra live with her errors? How did the
other children survive the onslaught of battles? Thus we learn more about the
world, more about Ender, and tons about Bean. Card uses this text to launch
another line of sequels and explore the social and political vacuum created by
the absence of the great enemy. As one who thoroughly enjoyed Ender’s Game, I
find equal but different joy in this text as well.

Ender in Exile is billed
as the immediate follow up to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game (a
fantastic novel on its own) even though the text was not written for
many years after. That said, the novel falls far short of its predecessor and
is almost out of place in the quartet that forms the foundation of the
Enderverse. In essence, this text is billed as a rewrite of the final chapter
of Ender’s Game, we return to Eros and
witness the plodding along of the children as war hits Earth and the once united
front splinters into regional segments. Quickly, all of Ender’s jeesh returns
to earth and Ender, who is the savior of humanity begins his journey of self-flagellation
and redemption. Along the way he is to shape the universe, to establish the
right of colonies to self-rule, and to find himself. Orson Scott Card uses the
space to fill in gaps, to link items up, and to force his universe to converge.
Unfortunately, force is an accurate
description of the endeavor.

Yes, it is interesting to see how Ender’s family reacts to
his victory, to watch Valentine struggle with the decision to either stay on
Earth or follow her brother to his exile in the stars, but at the same time,
the novel often feels like it is just filling space. The space is interesting,
but it is just space. Ender is interesting, endearing, but, does anyone doubt
that he will be the governor of the first colony when he lands even though the
ship’s admiral is arranging a coup? Of course the skillful way in which Ender
goes about this transition is fun to read, but do we need to read it, do we
need to see an alternate, more detailed discovery of the formic Hive Queen? Does
anyone question his reluctance to marry and even engage in teenage hormonal shenanigans
when he is still coming to grips with the annihilation of a species?

At the same time, Card is attempting to fill in too many
gaps. Whereas before this text Jane found Ender, now Graff knows of Jane, even
if not in full, and links them up in terms of money management. This fact, like
many of the overlaps between texts in the multiple series of this universe,
seems too convenient, too contrived, especially when the battles of Achilles
vs. Bean plays out on a distant colony dominated by Indians. These moments take
away from golden opportunities and standout as revisionist history, thus
diluting an otherwise rich universe.

Thursday, August 13, 2015

The third and fourth books of the Enderverse come in Xenocide/Children
of the Mind. In actuality, these texts should be one, and Orson Scott Card admits
to splitting them up, perhaps out of time, perhaps to make more money. Either
way, they grapple with large issues, as his works often seem to do. Here we
explore the savage nature of man, here we contemplate the worth of ancient
culture, even when these cultures are transported to new planets, and here we
work to combat governmental indiscretion and the industrial military power
complex. Each issue, whether it is Japanese pride, Samoan hunger, or Chinese power
structures, allows Card to dig into how people tick, something he does
remarkably well, while exploring the redemption of one Ender Wiggin.

Outside of these thematic ideals, everything picks up a
couple decades after Speaker
for Dead and continues the exact same central plot line: Lusitania is in
peril, three species face annihilation (the third being the descolada virus) and Ender seeks to solve the universe’s problems as he always does. The piggies are now living in harmony with the
colonists, unbeknownst to most men but not to the piggies and Ender’s clan, the
buggers are thriving on the other side of the planet, and Miro is set to return
from his trip to space with Ender’s sister Valentine having only aged a few
weeks during his decades long journey. The two alien, sentient species seek to avoid their extinction by
exploring colonization, and the church has made inroads to the piggies. Yet
tipping points will have to be reached, violence will have to occur between the
species, the buggers will have to come out to humanity, and descolada will have
to be beaten. Each possible plot line, from the death of, the symbolic resurrection of Miro, and Ender's personal biological failure, is explored.

On the World of Path, a planet of Japanese descent and
culture, the Godspoken, a race of super geniuses with OCD like symptoms, work
to solve multiple issues. First they obey the Starways Congress and thus the
will of the Gods as the attempt to find the missing fleet headed to destroy Lusitania.
Despite the passage of decades since the rebellion of Lusitania, planetary
destruction seems more than likely as a fleet equipped with the MD device nears. Such actions will inevitably lead to the discovery
and possible destruction of Jane. Yet Jane, by linking this planet and many
others, works to reveal the insidious actions of the congress, the manipulation
of a race of people not just on this planet but on others as well. Jane, as she
works to save herself, also creates a vast web of supporters, those who save
her memories and help her to solve the most complex mysteries of the universe.

Can one travel faster than light? Can people be created out
of thin air, can multiple species, like multiple races, exist in harmony? Then of
course there is Ender, the savior that inadvertently splits his personality and
works to right the wrongs of his past in doing so. What is his fate, that of
his adopted family, that of his sister, and by proxy that of his best friend
Jane? As a joint volume, the texts work fantastically, yet Children of the Mind works far better.
Whereas Xenocide drags on an on, asking
questions on top of questions, the second half provides the answers. The series
ends in style and complexity, in a way that Graff would surely appreciate but
perhaps hate.

Thursday, August 6, 2015

Speaker
for the Dead, the sequel to Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game,
picks up some 3,000 years later. That is right, multiple millenniums
have passed since the bugger “formic” war (the species will change names
eventually but not in these first four books) but Ender is only around thirty as he has spent the overwhelming majority traveling at light speed
and has thus traveled to the farthest reaches of the galaxy, one that has been
colonized since he committed xenocide by killing the buggers. Yet he has never
settled, staying on one place only for days at a time before drifting on in
search of a purpose and a place. All the while, as humans have first taken over
the abandoned bugger worlds and then taken over planet after planet, Ender has
carried with him the last hive queen watching and waiting for the ideal time to
re-launch her species and right his wrong. One plot line rests here—Ender has
grown to love the larvae and communicates with her mentally on a frequent
basis.

In addition, a computer anomaly created by the buggers, one
that grew out of the game Ender played on his personal terminal in battle
school and now occupies the combined computing power of the galaxy lives in an
electronic jewel stored in his ear. Jane, as the program is known, is Ender’s
closest friend, helping Andrew navigate the universe, one where his old
nickname has become taboo, one where he still holds immense power. She is on
the brink of discovery after 3,000 years of life, and while she offers
innumerable resources, she has yet to compete for his love and attention. Things
change. In this novel, one that is far more adult than its predecessor, a universe sits in constant flux.

Thus, as far as we are told, Ender has been traveling planet-to-planet
Speaking for the Dead, carrying on the tradition he started when he wrote the
Hive Queen and the Hegemon and revealing the true nature of an individual’s
life—the good, the bad, the honest, the sad. As one would expect, this position
fits the man our boy hero turned into. He cuts to chase, he finds the meat of a
situation, and he goes for the jugular, whether it be war or grief, love or
hate. His pattern of planet hopping and speaking, takes him to Novinha, a girl
he falls for from thirty years away. Novinha has lost her parents, her surrogate father
Pipo, and due to the details of the Pipo’s death at the hands of the first sentient
species discovered since the buggers, the Pequeninos, she refuses to marry her
true love Libo. Yet Ender loves her at first sight. He feels the pain in her
lonely teenage face, and travels to find her in her 40’s and speak to the death
not of Pipo as planned but to that of her freshly dead abusive husband.

So we find a story of veiled love, of a new alien species
capable of living three lives (worm, piggies, trees), of a deadly virus that is
constantly mutating and threatening the survival of the human race, and of the
restoration of a specious from extinction. Are these creatures worth saving? Do
they deserve human respect and attention? The plots play out as Ender speaks to
the death of Marcão, seeks to heal a family, and conjoin the fate of piggies with
that of man. He is negotiator, he is pacifier, he is a force of balance. Humanity is questioned, it is confronted, and it is shown to be capable greatness once again. Yet,
at the same time, the community of Lusitania is singled out by the Starways
Congress for violating the policies of non-intervention, and thus are held at
gunpoint as an MD device, the very device Ender used to eliminate the bugger
home world, is sent to annihilate them first for doing more than observe the
piggies and second for the health risk of the Descolada virus.